Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Real Magick, Not in RPGs...

So yesterday I was basically at my wits’ end with the UTE, the
uruguayan state-owned monopoly power-company. For over two weeks now
I’d been trying to get temporary power set up at our new house, the
Abbey, so that we could get renovations underway. This had involved,
thus far, 5 visits to their offices, a dozen phone calls, and 3
technician’s visits to the house, none of which had resulted in
anything.

Thus, yesterday, I decided that I had exhausted all reasonable
options, and proceeded to judge that my sense of necessity had reached
the point that it was time to rely on supernatural means. Remembering
the success I’d had some months back when I was having a lengthy and
seemingly unresolvable problem with my baning website, I decided to take
the same tack this time. I created a bindrune, drew it while
vibrating, and charged it.

Then I went one last time to the UTE offices. This time I managed to
speak to a manager there, who actually behaved like quite the human
being; he managed to order one of his underlings to just cut through all
the red tape and send me the installation the next day (ie. today), and
she seemingly obeyed.
So that took care of that right? Well, not quite. Today I had sent
one of the workers to stay there (the last time, when I waited at the
house for hours and no one showed up, was enough sitting around for me),
and when noon had rolled along without any sign of these people, I
decided to do as I was taught, and be cautious. I called the UTE line,
and they passed me to the technicians (someone they don’t often allows
the mere citizens to interact with directly, lest we realize that the
bureaucrats are unnecessary!), who told me that in fact, in spite of the
assurances of the day before, they were NOT coming. They claimed that
they lacked some kind of inspection form. I asked if they had planned
to let me know they weren’t coming or would it just be a surprise?
Apparently, the answer was (as usual) the latter. They just don’t give a
flying fuck about anything, these guys.

So here I was, thinking that yet again I was going to be forced to go
down, in person, to the UTE offices. I was getting ready to go, and I
remembered I had to record (every good magician keeps records) the
failure of the bindrune to do its job this time around; when I opened my
magical diary, I looked at the bindrune (which was written on separate
paper but I had tucked into the diary for safekeeping) and at that very moment that I laid eyes on it
my phone rang. It was the manager from yesterday; without being called
by me, he had somehow found out about the alleged screw up, and told me
he personally was going to fix it and that I shouldn’t do anything, that
he had already sent the crew out specifically to the Abbey right now. I
was a bit dubious but when I called my architect, it was in fact
confirmed that the technical crew from UTE were there at that very
moment installing the temporary power.

So there you have it, the nightmare (or at least this one particular
nightmare in the process of Uruguayan Home Ownership) is over. And I’m
not demanding that anyone believe that it was thanks to the bindrune (2
out of 2 now when it comes to magically dominating huge heartless
bureaucracies!); only that everything in my description of events is
true. Could it be that I’d made such a nuisance of myself that the
manager decided to keep an eye on my case? Entirely possible, though
they had been damn good at not giving a shit until that very moment.
Maybe he was just being a decent human being? That’s certainly possible;
it has now been my definite experience from a number of these
bureaucracies in Uruguay (the mail, the phone service/internet service,
UTE, immigrations, and others) that the regular union-member
public-employee in Uruguay, who talk so much about the “power of the
people” and how they’re working-class, seem to assume that since they
are “the people” they don’t actually need to ever give a shit about the
customer, client and/or citizen they’re supposed to be serving; while on
the other hand the managerial staff have in each case proven to be far
friendlier and more concerned with setting things right and actually
being public servants rather than entitled uninterested bureaucrats.

So yeah, it could have been the manager. It is also pretty much a
given that sooner or later, power would be turned on at the Abbey, so
that if that were the only thing we were looking at here, that would be
pretty underwhelming as “results”. But rather (on both occasions) what
really made an impact was just how fast, and when, everything turns
around after doing the operation. That’s the interesting part. The
next time I hit a dead end dealing with some kind of large public or
private entity, I know what I’m going to be doing…